Re: [Amc-list] Hydrogen Power (was Holley Carb Questions .... )

[Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

The real, underlying fundamental problem is that our entire world is built 
upon "fuel" as in sticks gathered in the forest that fell there without any 
investment of energy or work on our part some time in the past -- in the form 
of fossil fuel. It's like spending a non-growth inheritance, or next month's 
rent money.

Every single other source of energy requires converting and existing source 
(sun, plants, whatever) into a transmissible or storable form.

Hydrogen and even alcohol are just storage units. They are not "fuels" in that 
other sense. There's only one free lunch, dinosaur goo, not a variety of 
them. Anyone who argues otherwise is, to be blunt, ignorant, trying to sell 
you something, or a subscriber to various conspiracies, left right or 
otherwise.

There's no way around the no-free-lunch thing. Period. None.

Corn-based alcohol is a scam for politicians and oil companies. If every 
square hectare of fertile soil in the US was converted to corn production, 
the resulting alcohol would meet no more than 15% of US energy needs. 

Corn-based alcohol is a storage method for solar energy plus the energy it 
takes to produce all the components, which it turns out, is very high.

Hydrogen bonds very tightly to many elements. It's extremely hard to break a 
chemical molecular bond. It takes a fixed and finite amount of energy, 
period. It's not reducable. Many cracking systems have other inefficiencies, 
and these can be improved, but it will always take more energy to split 
water -- or any other H2 compound -- than it produces. It's inarguable 
physics.

Draw your own conclusions. Mine are, reduction of unbelievably stupid energy 
consumption in the first place. We're incredibly stupid and wasteful as a 
race/culture (the overall human one). People have been tricked into 
thinking "conservation" means "giving up" but that's pure politics. 
Energy-neutrality would certainly mean a wholesale revolution in literally 
everyone's world.

I don't have much hope for this being fixed. There's too much stuff with a 
stake in the current infrastructure.





On Friday 07 September 2007 20:15:07 Frank Swygert wrote:
> So is alcohol -- depending on how it's produced. New methods are much more
> efficient than old ones. With hydrogen it all depends on how you produce
> it. Splitting it from H2O usually (or used to) take as much electric energy
> from the grid as you get (got?) in hydrogen gas. There are other ways that
> may be more productive. One company on the net (don't recall who!) had a
> novel idea -- they sell you a solar powered hydrogen generator that splits
> it from water, so it's all "free"! The big problem is it takes a couple
> days to get a tank of hydrogen, which will only cover 60-70 miles, IIRC.
> Using hydrogen in a fuel cell to create electricity is supposed to be much
> more efficient than burning the gas directly. That's why the fuel cell cars
> from GM. It would be easy to convert gas stations that way too -- just pump
> the chemical(s) instead of gasoline. So the existing infrastructure could
> be used, lessening costs impact. Heck, the oil companies could invest some
> of their gougings... e r... savings... in hydrogen/chemical plants and make
> a complete circle of it! We could still be at their mercy, keeping them
> happy too... (tongue firmly in cheek on that one!)
>
>
> --------------
>
> --- Wrambler242@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > > Yahoo has a group called wastewatts that has been
> > > beating the hydrogen issue to death recently.
> > > You may want to read up on it. They say it is energy
> > > neutral or even negative, as in it takes more energy
> > > to create then it produces!


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